What would you buy w/ $2800 budget?? - Page 4

I hate to say it, but i agree w/ zlatanov. For the best all-around package, you cant really beat a p-m. At least until the ULV A64's come out.

My personal strategy for using Dothans, and I have/will have (too long to explain) a 1.7 not the 2.0 you are shooting at, is to load the lappy with RAM

In my opinion the you have several options for dtr's. On the P4 side you have the Sager 8790, 5690 and the Dell 9100/XPS. On the AMD side you have the Sager 4750, the Uniwill 258KAo( which from the reviews is a very good laptop), The Acer Ferrari. Of course there are other options available. However if you can wait for the pcie lappys to come out in late sept. or oct., then I would wait. One choice I considered before having to pay for school was to buy the Uniwill because it is cheap and then get a pcie when they came out. Since gamming isn't a priority any laptop in the dtr or the lightweight class would perform well, just make sure you get at least a mobility 9700. I forgot to mention I would look at the Sager 3790 also.

The only dothan that gets close to dtr type power is the 3790.

Very good recommendations. however, there are a few issues with them. an acer ferrari is NOT a DTR, as it weighs 6.6lbs and gets better battery life than any of the other lappy listed here. (~3 hours if conditioned properly) also, the uniwill is a great lappy for the price, but one big issue is the heat (a problem carried over from its P4 sibling). however, this is easily fixed using a good laptop cooler. good luck again qith your purchase.

Because he is in love with Sager, which by the way are some of the best notebooks, indeed. Please understand that most people here in these forums are heavy gamers and their undersatnding for a blazing fast notebook is very heavily influenced on the Graphics card - Sager are gaming laptops by virtue. This, however doesn't mean they are not top-notch in other activities as well.
My point is that that DeLL XPS with 9800 everybody was haling as the fastest DTR you can find has no cpu that you won't be able to find in another laptop. What makes it so special is the Graphics card it has 9800 which is the fastest you could find in laptop. So the DeLL is FASTEST from a gamers's point of view.
If you are gonna use this laptop for AutoCAD and the likes your minimum requirement for GPU should be 64mb ATI 9700. There are a number of Dothan laptops with this GPU. The Sager 3790 is one of the few, however, that come with 128mb ATI 9700, another one is the Compal 56, and the Acer Aspire 2025 (wonderful machine but a bit expensive). The Sager, however, is the only one of these that comes with a higher resolution screen - WSXGA and even WUXGA as an option. These screens are very useful (read nice to look at) when you are dealing with graphics and such.

I been searching for those sites for my own research actually to get a better idea of how well the Pentium Ms perform so he asked at a pretty good time.

Not as if I'm holding a gun to his head forcing him to read.

Yeah, there's the Fujitsu E series notebooks.

i'd buy a very high spec mitac 8050 w/ dothan 2ghz, 2gb ram, 80gb 5400rpm etc or wait until sony do something interesting

Well, Sony is a Sony but there are some other brands famous for their screen quality - Sager, Asus, Acer, HP (their screens are very good though bashed arount this forum for their GPUs, etc.), and of course Fujitsu. But Sony seems to be the champ in screen quality with their xBrite technology.

It has active cooling on the gpu. Thus its clocked higher to almost dtr clock speeds. I think it has the potential to be clocked even further, but nobody has overclocked there 3790 yet. But if you want a dtr now get 4750. Full keyboard and amd 64.

I know the Acer is only 6.6 pounds, but it has desktop like performance hence the dtr rating. I know the Uniwill and the Ferrari are not true dtr by definition and they are more thin and light, but they do offer outstanding performace for thier form factor. Heat I notice is relative issue any dtr or thin and light with that much power is going to get hot. People have returned the 8790 due to heat problems. The same could be said about any notebook on the list. Basicly we all have opinions on what is hot and what is necessary. Being a hardcore gamer I expect to put up with a lot of heat form the lappy. Best advice research and make the best decision that suits your needs. However in about 2 months the new pcie lappys should be out in the dtr catagory, unfortunetly the dothan models have been held back till next year.

sony's xbrite screens are different from most similar ones because they have both high-resolutions and the bright stuff. the only other one like that that i can think of is the brightview on hp's zd7000 lappy (17-inch, p4, geforce 5700). most other xbrite-type displays are very stingy with the resolution, usually XGA (1024x768) max and dont have really great vidcards like the sagers or acers. verdict: not worth it IMO. but that's just my $.02.

Intel's slated to release Alvisio in Q1 2005. Alvisio is a new chipset for Pentium M that includes PCI-Express and dual-channel memory, as well as a new 533Mhz FSB to replace the 400Mhz FSB. I'm sure there's other features, but those seem to be the really important ones.

Edit: Oh, and the 17" widescreens from Sager are said to be "glossy", and everyone who buys one raves about the picture on them. The "brite" names for the screens are just marketting and copyright stuff, I'm sure.

either

A. A used Car
b. 23" LCD